Archive for June, 2012

A new trailer for the execrable Total Recall remake has been released and some excited commentary surrounds the appearance of that fan-favourite from the original film, the mutant hooker with three tits.

News of a remake of the classic Paul Verhoeven directed sci-fi action flick from 1990, starring Arnie in what can now be considered the last of his hardcore violent 80s roles, was greeted with much disdain. The original is the epitome of the kind of film they simply do not make anymore, i.e. an over-the-top, ultraviolent science fiction film for an adult audience (from the filmmaker who also gave the world Robocop, no less). That it was being remade with a modern mega-budget could mean only one thing, that the new one would likely be a watered-down, Disneyfied turd of a film pitched at family audiences and likely carrying a PG-13 age rating. When it transpired that this remake would be directed by Len Wiseman, and written by Kurt Wimmer, my own sense of disgust and outrage was palatable, to say the least. Wiseman is behind the terrible Underworld films, and delivered the single worst of the four Die Hard films. Wimmer is the writer/director of such films as Equilibrium (it’s shite outside of Bale’s performance, you know it) and the disastrous Ultraviolet. Make no mistake about it; this remake will be a thoroughly worthless piece of shit.

“Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy — the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.” – Eric Hoffer

So the catharsis of posting here aims to achieve recovery from ruin and win solvency for the soul.

This was initially intended as a review piece for Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel*, Prometheus, but a number of factors combined to obliterate my interest in pursuing that idea. There has been a massive amount of online discussion following the release of the film which could generally and simplistically be summarized as being an ongoing debate between two camps; those highly critical of what they see as a badly-realized and thus extremely disappointing film that squandered immense potential, and apologists on the other side who seek to mollify the letdown fans with specious arguments regarding the production values of the film and threadbare theories surrounding religious symbolism based on comments the filmmakers made in post-release interviews. (It may be obvious from the way I phrased that which of the two camps I place myself in.) Already this debate has diminshed the value of a mere review, although I still had some lingering frustration which I intended to channel into a scathing response here until my whole approach to the film and its aftermath were largely altered by a brief, and wholly unexpected, comment from my younger brother. Expressing my disdain for the flick via a popular social networking site, and inquirying as to his own thoughts, he furnished me wth the reply, “It was never going to be what we wanted.”

To give that quote some context, my brother is a major Alien franchise fan. We’re talking about a guy who had all the Dark Horse comics, as well as scale models, multiple copies of the films (including VHS boxed sets), a fucking life-sized plastic facehugger, etc. I had imagined he would be in the vanguard of the inevitable backlash jihad against Prometheus but the serene simplicity of his entirely fair response caused me to reflect on my own pointless frustrations with the film and, ultimately, let it go. That said, I still feel moved to offer some criticism here of the “Space Jesus” plot point because…fuck that shit is why. Needless to say, this will involve major spoilers.

‘Bubble Pop!‘ is well known, children. It has long since floated far and wide beyond the confines of these calm, Korean waters, to alight on western pop culture consciousness with 29 million Youtube views and counting. In attempting to explain how it has accomplished this I would cite its indomitable strength and purity as a pop product. It’s there in the title, it’s in every frame of the video, and it’s in the relentless madness of the song itself.

Sitting here, scrutinizing the video with quiet intensity, in the serious manner of Jean-Luc Picard in his captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise, I find myself pondering, “what is the bubble she’s referring to?” Is it her ass? Perhaps, for the callipygian Korean lass is given to emphatically shaking and swinging it around throughout her dance routine. Then, my internal inquiry proceeds, is she therefore demanding her derrière be popped in some fashion? Further, and more to the point, can I make it so? I extend a gentle, yet nonetheless phallocentric, index finger in the direction of the jubilant and gyrating buttocks of the young woman on my computer screen as Picard’s stentorian voice rumbles that famed authoritative phrase in my head. He would also quote Shakespeare of course, perhaps some Melville. “To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee“, although that would suggest a dark and fiendish lust for ass quite unbecoming an officer of Starfleet.

I don’t work in the media, so it may be naive of me to ask this, but surely a report about a man who makes a video recording of himself butchering and dismembering his flatmate, which he then posts online, before sending various body parts to political parties in his native Canada and then fleeing to Europe to spark an international manhunt, is sensational enough? I mean, you don’t really have to spice up a factual story that horrific with additional bullshit in order to make it more attention-grabbing, right?

Luka here, at what I’ve a-gone and done!

Luka Rocco Magnotta (born Eric Newman) has been a bad boy. Sometime in late May of this year he killed his roommate, “Justin” Lin Jun, a Chinese student studying in Canada since July 2011. Magnotta repeatedly stabbed the bound, naked Lin with an ice pick and kitchen knife before going on to commit unspecified acts of necrophilia and possibly cannibalism with the body. This was all captured in a video that Magnotta made of the events, entitled “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick”, which he then posted on a delightful sounding website called Bestgore.com. I have not watched this video, and have mainly heard about this story only from morning news broadcasts of BBC World Service, but it was there that I encountered the aggravating detail that inspired this post. In the BBC report, and in subsequent other mainstream media reports I’ve since looked at, it was said that Magnotta’s homemade snuff movie contained a song “from the film American Psycho“, that played in the background as the murderer went about his heinous crime. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any creepier, the real-life psycho listens to a song that is somehow connected to psychos! The subtle implication being, of course, that Luka Magnotta may have been inspired to commit his brutal murder after watching and perhaps becoming obsessed with the unremarkable film from 2000.